Variaciones (Variations) (2020) reflects on the colors of our environment and the perception we have of them according to the different emotional, social and political situations in which we find ourselves, establishing a dialogue between the realities that shape our lives through color and its plastic-visual versatility, while delving into the possibilities of the medium itself.
It explores the connotations of color by analyzing its historical context: why is violet the symbol of the struggle for gender equality; its association with illness and loss; why are white, green and blue present in all hospitals; and its link to political thought: why does a political party choose one color or another? Questions that arise to address how we are influenced by the surrounding chromatics. An influence that is determined by our own experience and by the environment in which we find ourselves. We see what we know. Our culture, our experiences, define how we perceive colors.
The discourse is completed with the back and forth between the spectator and the work once it is shown in the gallery, creating a space-piece-observer interconnection.
The meaning of color varies according to the culture and the time in which a person develops. Hence, the same color has different connotations depending on where we live and the social, cultural and political moment in which we find ourselves. An example of this is white, which in the West is associated with peace and in Africa with death. Green was the color of the sea in Western medieval imagery until the West began to represent it with blue in the 15th century. A blue that has always represented the feminine principle: in ancient painting it is the symbolic color of the Virgin Mary, the gem assigned to Virgo is the sapphire, feminine names that come from celestial blue as Celestina or Iris that comes from a blue flower. However, newborns began to be dressed in blue if they were boys and pink if they were girls and our perception was altered. In the same way as violet, which became the symbol of the struggle for gender equality after the events that took place in 1908, the year in which the female employees of the Cotton New textile factory went on strike over working conditions, for which reason the owner set fire to the factory and caused 129 women to burn to death while fighting for their rights. It is said that the smoke was this color because of the fabrics the women were working with.
My work analyzes global issues from an intimate perspective. Hence, Variaciones (Variations) continues the same line of work as in previous projects such as Mapa Sonoro(Sound Map)(2019), Soundscape (2018), Sinestesia (2016/2017) and Nada Grave(Nothing Serous)(2010/2011), posing a dialogue with the viewer in order to make him/her participate in the reflections carried out during my research-creation process. A research process based on the study of different color theories -without anthropological pretensions- in combination with personal references that allow me to move on to a process of creation where the conclusions obtained are materialized. Theories that address the readings of Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Eva Heller, John Berguer, Juan Carlos Sanz, Anne Varichon, Wucius Wong, Michell Pastoureau, Francisco Pérez_Dolz and William H. Gass, among other articles and essays. In addition to a purely processual and material interest in which curiosity about the characteristics of the medium itself plays a fundamental role.
My intention is to invite the public to a conscious gaze in which their personal imaginary plays an active role, hence the installation character, and sometimes interactive, that some of the pieces will have.
Virginia Rivas